RichardB

Sorry for delay in replying to your very interesting thoughts @libby, but I’ve been neck deep in work lately.

Re modernists etc using the techniques and ideas of psychic distance before Gardner codified it. Yes, absolutely, a large measure of what he was doing was identifying techniques that were already out there. I would suggest that his…[Read more]

Well done, Sandra. Another great competition. And well done to my co-competitors. Two top-notch entries. Congratulations, Alex. A nice twisty yarn!

<p>Congratulations @Alex!! 🥳🥳</p><p>I too am a fan of the penny-brown eyes. Well done, you 😃</p><p>Also another stunner from Ath; Top-shelf characterization in a small pinch of words. #howdoeshedoit </p><p>Sandra, this was a marvellous prompt and I fully enjoyed it! Can’t wait to see what Alex comes up with, for August :)…[Read more]

My One and Only Love. That’s from the Cloud and all the way back to 2014/2015.

Congratulations, Richard. It’s a powerful story that deserves recognition.

I see from the website that my entry has been longlisted, too, which feels rather good. I didn’t recognise any of the other titles.

Andrew, 1975

It’s February, and evening is upon us. Andrew goes unnoticed. Pedestrians streaming by the Palace Theatre barely even see a youth leaning against the wall. Some look towards him, but they are peering through the glass doors. Maybe they are wondering whether Jesus Christ Superstar is worth the ticket price. The traffic sweeping a…[Read more]

Yeah, I think recruiting people to a Discord group is much easier than to a website, tbh. I spend more time in my discord group than I do any online group, mainly because it’s an app & I can do it easily when I’m away from my laptop. Partly because it facilitates chat in a way websites, however well constructed, just don’t. And where I am now, I’m…[Read more]

I like Discord for all those reasons too @raine.

It may well and best suit the members who will show up there, and couldn’t there be an influx of new writerly blood from the different tags we use on open channels?

There’s a lot to be said for Discord. There are a number of pages I visit regularly. I don’t imagine it would suit some of our members, but there may be no alternative in a year’s time.

Just wanted to extend my appreciation to Ath and Jules for starting & maintaining/updating/supporting this place. I’m afraid I have very much drifted off, largely just because of the other demands on my writing time. It’s nice to know this place is here & I look forward to the annual challenges, but I honestly don’t spend enough time here to be…[Read more]

Sorry Sandra, I copied it in from my phone and forgot the ever-imperative word count: 500 words excluding the title.

No preference.

My WIP is first person, present tense. I didn’t choose or plan this; it just happened when I started writing. I think it fits the voice of the MC.

I suppose that many people who are mainly familiar with a narrator, often omnipotent, addressing the reader in past tense, assume that present tense (especially first person) is likely…[Read more]

<p style=”text-align: center;”>THE LIBRARIAN</p>
“Come here.”

Mayrie tensed at the grave, inscrutable timbre of his voice. Some would call it a salt-of-the-earth voice but she was under no illusion about the nature of the man seated before her. The slight narrowing of her eyes all but said, if it’s just the same to you Guv, I think I’d rather…[Read more]

Very true. There are precious few lighter moments. Mind you, he’s not quite the worst author I know for that. Not exactly fantasy (although he did write a collaborative series with Terry Pratchett), Stephen Baxter has the habit of making you identify with and root for particular characters, and then watch as their responses to ever tougher…[Read more]

@woolleybeans wrote: “For me, that aspect [the defining factor of PD] was/is the level to which the POV character’s thoughts, feelings etc influence/become part of the writing style itself.

As for how that correlates to film/TV…

The saturation of colours? Whether the shot angles up through something? The somewhat cliché blurry/wobbly scen…[Read more]

You’re probably right re urban fantasy, I have a rather vague grasp on the various subgenres, and that’s when authors oblige and ensure that their work falls squarely within one category. I have no idea where to put China Mieville’s Bas-Lag novels, and I suspect he likes it that way. They have the epic sweep and complex magical systems of high…[Read more]

There’s something awe-inspiring about coming into contact with truly large insects and similar bugs, and your blog reminded me of an incident on holiday in Spain, years ago. We’d rented a cottage and on the last day we were cleaning up and I’d put a bin-bag by the door. I reached down to retrieve what looked like a piece of vegetation poking out…[Read more]